Have you ever prayed for God to guide a situation—
and then watched that situation get worse?
You prayed before it happened.
You asked God for wisdom.
You asked him to guide what was said and what was done.
You genuinely wanted His will.
And then something happened that seemed to move everything in the wrong direction.
And afterward you were left wondering,
God, why did you allow that?
Not because you don’t believe in God.
In fact, it’s almost the opposite.
You’re actually asking the question because you do believe in God.
You trusted Him.
You asked him to guide you.
And now you’re trying to understand why He allowed something that seems completely contrary to what you’ve been praying for.
God, if you knew where this was going, why didn’t you stop it?
Why didn’t you redirect it?
Why would you allow something that seems to have made everything harder?
Those are difficult questions.
And they aren’t new.
There’s an entire book in the Bible built around someone asking them.
It’s called Habakkuk.
Habakkuk was written during an incredibly difficult time for God’s people. There was corruption, violence, injustice, and the growing threat of an enemy nation.
Habakkuk couldn’t understand what God was doing.
So he asked.
And God answered.
But strangely enough, God’s answer created another question.
Because God told Habakkuk that he was going to deal with what was happening—
just not in the way Habakkuk expected.
God was going to use the Babylonians.
And Habakkuk essentially responds:
Wait. What?
That doesn’t make sense.
You’re going to deal with wickedness by allowing them to come against us?
Habakkuk wasn’t simply questioning whether God would act.
He was questioning God’s methods.
And there’s a difference.
We can trust God’s desired result and still struggle deeply with the method He allows us to walk through to get there.
That’s where faith gets difficult.
Because we usually have some idea of what God’s answer should look like.
We pray for restoration, so we expect things to begin getting better.
We pray for healing, so we expect wounds to begin closing.
We pray for wisdom, so we expect everything we say and do to make things clearer.
We pray for peace, so we expect conflict to begin disappearing.
We pray for God to guide a situation, so naturally we expect the situation to start moving in the right direction.
And then—
it doesn’t.
Something happens.
Something is said.
Something changes.
Something that seems to make the situation more complicated than it was before.
And we’re left asking:
God, how could that possibly be part of what you’re doing?
Maybe that’s where we need to understand the difference between a method and a result.
Because we often confuse them.
We experience something painful in the middle of the story and assume we’re looking at the ending.
We aren’t.
We’re looking at a moment.
A moment we may not understand.
A moment we may wish had never happened.
A moment we may have specifically prayed God would protect us from.
And yet—
we’re still in the middle of the story.
That doesn’t mean every painful thing that happens is something God caused.
And it doesn’t mean everything that goes wrong is secretly good.
Pain is still pain.
Mistakes are still mistakes.
Consequences are still consequences.
But it does mean that what we see as a setback does not have the authority to determine God’s final result.
God can work through things we never would have chosen.
He can redeem things we wish had never happened.
He can take moments that appear to have moved everything backward and somehow use them as part of moving us forward.
And sometimes we won’t understand how until much later.
Remember – just because things seem to be moving in the wrong direction doesn’t mean God isn’t moving you toward the right destination.
Maybe that’s why God tells Habakkuk:
“Write down the revelation and make it plain…”
Remember what I’ve told you.
Hold on to it.
Because there are going to be moments when what you’re seeing doesn’t seem to agree with what you’re believing.
Matthew Henry wrote about this passage:
“When tossed and perplexed with doubts about the methods of Providence, we must watch against temptations to be impatient. When we have poured out complaints and requests before God, we must observe the answers God gives by His word, His Spirit, and providences; what the Lord will say to our case. God will not disappoint the believing expectations of those who wait to hear what He will say unto them.”
I keep coming back to that phrase:
“Doubts about the methods of Providence.”
Because that’s different from doubting God.
Sometimes I believe God is good—
I just don’t understand his method.
I believe God hears me—
I just don’t understand why he allowed that.
I believe God can restore—
I just don’t understand why things seem further from restoration than they did before.
I believe God is working—
I just can’t see how this could possibly be part of the work.
And much of the Christian walk entails asking God those hard questions, observing His answers through His Word and His Spirit, and trusting Him with the parts we don’t understand.
That’s faith.
Not pretending we understand.
Trusting when we don’t.
And what a gift it is to read Scripture from where we stand today.
Because we get to see how often God kept His word.
We can turn the page.
Habakkuk couldn’t.
He had to live between the promise and the result.
And that’s where many of us are living right now.
Between.
Between what we’ve prayed for and what we’ve seen.
Between what we believe God can do and what appears to be happening.
Between the promise and the result.
And the temptation in that space is to judge the whole story by what’s happening in this particular chapter.
Maybe that’s too soon.
Because what looks like a setback from where you’re standing may not be the result.
It may simply be something God will work through on the way to the result.
Eventually Habakkuk reaches a different place.
His circumstances haven’t suddenly become easy.
He hasn’t received an explanation for everything.
He has simply decided where he’s going to put his trust.
He says:
“Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
— Habakkuk 3:18
Yet.
I don’t understand.
Yet I trust.
I don’t know why God allowed this.
Yet I trust.
This doesn’t look like things are getting better.
Yet I trust.
I would have written this chapter differently.
Yet I trust the Author.
Maybe that’s the invitation.
When we want something good, something consistent with God’s will, we pray for it.
We pursue it.
We ask God to guide us.
But ultimately, our confidence can’t be in our ability to understand every move God makes along the way.
Our confidence has to be in him.
Maybe instead of only asking,
“God, how are you going to move?”
we learn to pray,
“God, I trust you with the result. And I trust you through the process of getting there.”
Even when the process is painful.
Even when something happens that we don’t understand.
Even when we find ourselves asking,
Why did you allow that?
Because sometimes our world gets turned upside down on the way to becoming something different.
And when it does, perhaps faith isn’t figuring out why everything happened.
Perhaps faith is being able to say:
I don’t understand God’s methods right now.
But I haven’t seen the result yet.
So I’m going to stay the course.
And I’m going to trust him.
